Harry Potter: Kayneth

---

A magus is bound by their Origin.

The foundation of their existence. The very concept that governs their magic, their being, their fate.

Some called it the core principle of one's soul—a force that shaped every action, every thought, every instinct. To understand one's Origin was to understand one's truest self. To reject it was impossible. No matter how far one strayed, no matter how much one tried to resist, a magus could never escape the hand that had been dealt to them.

And so, for Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald, his Origin had always been his greatest blessing.

And his greatest curse.

"[Perfection]."

A concept that ruled him from the moment he was born.

A natural prodigy. A noble heir. A magus blessed with everything. Unparalleled talent, a prestigious lineage, and an aptitude for magecraft that set him apart even among the Lords of the Clock Tower. Failure was something he never had to contemplate, because it had never been a possibility. The path before him had been laid out in flawless, crystalline certainty—he would rise above the ranks, he would secure his legacy, he would achieve greatness.

It was inevitable.

Because for Kayneth, perfection was not an aspiration. It was a given.

Yet, now—

He drifted in the abyss, weightless, bodiless, thought barely clinging to existence.

He had failed.

Perfection had failed.

And if his Origin was "Perfection," then what did that make him now?

A contradiction? A broken ideal? A man who had never truly been in control of his own fate?

Kayneth had spent his entire life believing in absolute superiority. Believing that power and intellect determined everything. That he was above the mediocre, the unworthy, the lesser beings who clung to half-baked theories and rudimentary thaumaturgy.

But in the end, what had all of that amounted to?

What had his "Perfection" given him?

Nothing.

Nothing but humiliation. Nothing but ruin.

Nothing but death.

And perhaps the cruelest irony of all… was that he had only realized it too late.

"Perfection."

Had there ever been a more meaningless, worthless concept in this world?

Kayeneth might have laughed, if he still had a body to do so. But there was no laughter here. No warmth. No pain.

Only the void.

And the weight of the truth he had ignored for far too long.

---

A magus' life was dictated by legacy.

Bloodlines, inheritances, centuries of accumulated knowledge passed down from one generation to the next. The worth of a magus was measured not by individual brilliance alone, but by the weight of the ancestry that stood behind them.

And in that regard, Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald had been—without question—one of the most privileged men of his time.

The Archibald family was a lineage of prestige and nobility, an old and powerful house that had cemented its influence in the Clock Tower for centuries. As its heir, Kayneth had been raised with the full expectations of a Lord, molded from the moment of his birth to surpass all who came before him.

He had been a prodigy from childhood.

While others struggled to grasp the complexities of thaumaturgical theory, he mastered entire disciplines before he had even reached adulthood. His magical circuits were of exceptional quality—far beyond the average magus. His potential had been recognized by the highest echelons of the Association, ensuring that his path toward a Lordship was nothing short of assured.

His achievements were nothing less than flawless.

The youngest lecturer in the Department of Spiritual Evocation.

A genius in Mystic Code development, known for creating the Volumen Hydrargyrum, an unparalleled liquid metal thaumaturgy that could shift between offense, defense, and reconnaissance with unmatched efficiency.

The next in line for the El-Melloi Lordship, an unchallenged authority in his field, respected and admired by his peers.

A man who stood above the rest.

A future so absolute, so immovable, that failure had never even been a thought.

And among the many things that had been set in stone—was his marriage.

The engagement had been arranged for practical reasons, as most magus marriages were. The daughter of the Nuada-Re Sophia-Ri, a powerful lineage specializing in spiritual evocation, was an ideal match for the Archibald family. The merging of their bloodlines would further their mystical potential, ensuring the continued strength of their descendants.

And Sola-Ui Nuada-Re Sophia-Ri… had been perfectly suitable.

She was not a magus herself, but she carried the pride of a noble lineage. She was strong-willed, sharp-tongued, and raised with the same unshakable belief in superiority that defined the aristocracy of the Clock Tower. Kayneth had no great affection for her—just as she had none for him—but that was irrelevant. Love was a foolish, sentimental thing.

Magus marriages were built on pragmatism. On lineage. On the advancement of magic.

And for that, she was adequate.

Their engagement had been settled. Their fates intertwined. There had been no doubt that the two would marry, that they would continue the prosperity of their respective houses.

Because nothing in Kayneth's life had ever been uncertain.

Everything had been certain.

Everything had been his to control.

And yet—

That certainty had crumbled. That future had been shattered.

Because for all his achievements, all his talent, all his supposed brilliance—

None of it had been enough.

And the woman who had once stood beside him as a mere formality… whom he learned to "love"...

Had betrayed him without hesitation.

---

A magus was defined by his pride.

It was an absolute truth, an unspoken law that had governed the Moonlit World for generations. To wield the mysteries of magecraft, to walk the path toward the Root, was to stand apart from the ordinary. To be superior.

A magus do not yield.

A magus do not bow.

A magus do not compromise.

And yet, in the end, Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald had done all three.

He had begged.

The memory burned him more than any wound. More than the agony of his shattered circuits. More than the degradation of his broken body. More than even the wretched stench of defeat.

He had been forced to kneel. Forced to plead for his life. Forced to abandon everything—his dignity, his honor, his legacy—for a sliver of mercy.

And the one who had brought him to this state of ruin was not a magus of the Association.

Not a fellow aristocrat of the Clock Tower.

Not even a worthy rival.

It was a man with no name.

A mongrel.

A phantom.

The Magus Killer.

Emiya Kiritsugu.

The moment Kayneth had first laid eyes on him, he had known—there was something wrong about that man.

Everything about him violated the laws of the Moonlit World. There was no presence of mystery, no dignity of lineage, no reverence for the art of magecraft. A man utterly devoid of refinement, clad in the rags of a common mercenary, carrying nothing but cold, mechanical weapons.

Kayneth had dismissed him as a fool.

And for that mistake, he had suffered absolute disgrace.

---

The battle had not even been a battle.

There had been no grand duel of magecraft. No clash of mysteries. No contest of intellect and skill.

Only trickery.

Only cowardice.

Only ruthless, calculated efficiency.

Kayneth had been prepared. His bounded field had been impenetrable. His Volumen Hydrargyrum was the pinnacle of Mystic Codes, a technique that no mere commoner could hope to overcome.

But Kiritsugu had never intended to fight.

Instead—he had simply waited.

A single bullet.

A single. Damned. Bullet.

A weapon of crude steel, infused with no great mystery, carrying no great technique—nothing but pure, cold annihilation.

But it was the cause of his suffering, of his loss of his future.

Origin Bullets.

A weapon designed to shatter a magus from the inside out.

The moment it struck, he had felt it.

Something had broken.

His circuits—his very essence as a magus—shattered beyond repair.

His body convulsed. His limbs failed him. His mind, his magic, his everything—unraveled in an instant.

And in that moment—

For the first time in his life—

He had known the meaning of fear.

---

And then, the final insult.

The Geis Scroll.

A contract. A binding curse.

Kayneth had been given a single choice:

'Surrender.'

Submit himself to a contract that would ensure his obedience, strip away any hope of revenge, and leave him with nothing but shame.

If he did not—he would die.

He had tried to resist. He had tried to cling to what little remained of his pride.

But in the end, his survival instinct had won out.

And so, in that cold, wretched moment—

Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald, the prodigy of the Archibald family, the youngest lecturer of the Clock Tower, the heir to an illustrious bloodline–

Had signed his own humiliation.

---

But even as he lay there, broken and disgraced—

He could not deny the truth.

Kiritsugu was terrifying.

He had seen many magi in his time. Scholars. Lords. Aristocrats of prestige and power. Each of them adhered to the same principles, fought with the same logic, wielded mystery in the same way. Even he, as prodigious and powerful as he was, followed the system of logic that was ingrained in a magus' bloodline.

But Kiritsugu?

Kiritsugu killed magi.

He did not fight them. He did not challenge them. He did not engage in duels of theory and discipline.

He hunted them.

Like beasts. Like vermin. Like prey.

Cold. Precise. Unstoppable.

And as much as Kayneth hated him—

As much as he loathed that man with every fiber of his being—

There was a part of him that understood.

There was a part of him that, deep in the hollow pit of his soul, beneath the layers of rage and shame and bitterness—

Respected him.

Because Kiritsugu was not a magus.

He was a killer.

And killers did not care for pride.

Only results.

---

Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald had long understood that love was a foreign concept to the world of magi.

To a magus, pride was paramount. Legacy was absolute. Marriage was not built upon passion or desire, nor upon sentimentality or companionship.

It was a contract. A merging of lineages. A calculated effort to ensure the refinement of one's bloodline and the furthering of one's mysteries.

It was why he had never once questioned his engagement to Sola-Ui Nuada-Re Sophia-Ri.

Their union had been arranged by their families, a perfect alliance between two aristocratic bloodlines of the Clock Tower. The Sophia-Ri were formidable in their own right, their magecraft distinct yet complementary to the Archibalds. A marriage between them was an act of progress, not emotion.

Yet, for the sake of a prosperous union and his hunger for entertainment, he decided to grace her by his feelings, his affection reserved only to his goals and obsession.

He decided to "love" her.

At least, that was how Kayneth had always believed it to be.

Until he realized that she had never wanted him at all.

---

He had known, of course, that she was headstrong.

Even from their first meeting, she had been different from the other daughters of noble families—those who were raised to be demure, soft-spoken, ever-mindful of their place within a magus household.

Sola-Ui had no patience for such traditions. She had been bold, outspoken, unyielding—a woman who refused to be constrained by the expectations placed upon her.

Kayneth had initially found this amusing. Perhaps even admirable.

He had seen himself as the perfect magus, destined for greatness, and he believed that, in time, she would come to respect him. That her stubbornness was simply a youthful flaw, one that would eventually yield to the weight of his brilliance.

He was wrong.

She had never respected him.

She had never loved him.

And when the Holy Grail War began—

She had found someone else.

---

Diarmuid Ua Duibhne.

His Lancer.

The perfect knight. The perfect warrior.

A man with beauty beyond mortal comprehension, a hero of legend whose charm ensnared the hearts of women without fail.

He had known the stories. He had read the legends.

But never—never—had he imagined that his own fiancée would fall victim to them.

Yet he had seen it, from the very moment Lancer had materialized before them.

The way her eyes had lingered on him. The way she had spoken his name, with reverence, with yearning.

At first, Kayneth had dismissed it.

He was her betrothed. He was her superior.

What foolishness could possess her to betray him for a mere Servant?

But as the days passed, as the war unfolded, he had seen the truth with his own eyes.

As much as he wanted to deny the truth that was unfolding, he could not, his shame and rage upon realising that there might be a "chance" that his "love" might be discarded, unneeded, was brought by her actions and words.

The way she spoke to Lancer, softer than she ever had with him.

The way she gazed at him, admiration clear in her every glance.

The way she disobeyed Kayneth's commands—undermining him, overriding his orders, daring to claim control over Lancer herself.

His own fiancée—his intended—had turned against him.

And in the end, she had abandoned him completely.

---

Even now, even as he drifted in this liminal void between life and oblivion, he could still hear her final words to him.

"I never wanted you."

"It should have been me."

She had been speaking of the Command Seals.

Not of him. Not of his suffering.

But of Diarmuid.

Even as he lay dying, broken and betrayed. As much as he wanted to believe that she would stay by his side, to offer herself to him, the perfect man she could ask for to be her husband as a magus, her heart had never belonged to him.

---

He had given her everything.

He had given her the future of the Archibald family. He had given her a place at his side as the wife of a Lord. He had brought her into the Holy Grail War, offering her a chance to witness history itself.

And in return, she had given him nothing but scorn.

Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald, the pride of the Clock Tower—

Had died not only a failure as a magus, but as a man.

---

"The Origin is absolute."

A fundamental truth of the Moonlit World. A principle that defined the very essence of a magus.

A magus was not merely shaped by their knowledge or their lineage. No matter how refined their circuits, no matter how ancient their bloodline, their Origin was the immutable core of their existence.

It was a concept that predated the self. A law that dictated their very being, long before they were even born.

To defy it was to reject one's own nature. To embrace it was to realize one's greatest potential.

And Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald's Origin—the foundation of his soul, the essence of his very existence—

Was "Perfection."

---

"Perfection."

A word of pride. A word of burden.

It had shaped him in ways he had never questioned. In ways he had never truly understood—until now.

Even as a child, he had sought to be flawless.

His spellcraft had to be without equal.

His techniques had to be unparalleled.

His magecraft had to be absolute.

He was the heir of the Archibald family. The prodigy of the Spiritual Evocation Department of the Clock Tower. A genius whose talent was acknowledged by Lords and nobles alike.

He had never allowed failure to taint his record.

Despite seeing how the commoners voiced out their incessant prattle about him, he never paid attention to them who had no idea nor right to prove, with the exceptions of his willfull and idiot student, whom had confronted him numerous times, a futile act for him yet brought him satisfaction to imagine that he would prove the little brat wrong once he won the war.

He sought the grail out of boredom, because he wants entertainment, to further expand his achievements, to further consolidate his perfection.

And for decades, he had believed that this pursuit of Perfection was his greatest strength.

That it was the source of his brilliance.

That it was the foundation of his greatness.

But as he lay dying, body broken, circuits shattered, pride in ruins—

He finally understood the truth.

His Origin had not been his strength.

It had been his greatest weakness.

---

"Perfection breeds complacency."

He had been so convinced of his superiority that he had never prepared for true adversity.

He had believed that his defenses were unbreachable. That his strategies were infallible.

And when his fortress had collapsed beneath Kiritsugu's onslaught—when his magic circuits had been destroyed in an instant, leaving him crippled, helpless—

He had nothing left.

No contingencies. No precautions. No means of recovery.

Because he had never considered failure a possibility.

"Perfection breeds arrogance."

He had dismissed warnings. He had ignored threats.

He had seen Kiritsugu Emiya as an inferior, a mongrel who relied on crude firearms and base trickery.

He had believed that a mere gunman could never stand against a Lord of the Clock Tower.

That no amount of deception could overcome his magecraft.

And in his arrogance, he had walked straight into Kiritsugu's trap.

His bounded field, his Mystic Codes—none of them mattered.

Because Kayneth had fought as a magus should. And Kiritsugu had fought to kill.

"Perfection rejects imperfection."

Diarmuid Ua Duibhne had been the ideal Servant.

A knight of peerless skill, unwavering loyalty, and unshakable resolve.

Kayneth had summoned a hero whose strength was without flaw.

And yet—he had never understood him.

Because Diarmuid was a knight.

A warrior.

A man of honor.

He had not been a tool to be wielded. He had not been a mere pawn in Kayneth's pursuit of victory.

But Kayneth had treated him as such.

He had refused to acknowledge Diarmuid's worth beyond his use. He had refused to see him as anything more than a means to an end.

And in the end, that refusal had cost him everything.

A Master who could not trust his Servant.

A Servant who could not trust his Master.

They had never been a true partnership.

And for that, they had been doomed from the start.

---

The truth was undeniable.

His failures—every single one of them—

Had been caused by his Origin.

Because to seek Perfection meant to reject all that was flawed.

And a magus who could not accept flaws—who could not acknowledge weakness, who could not adapt, who could not evolve—

Could never survive.

"Perfection is stagnation."

"Perfection is death."

And so, as the last remnants of his mind began to fade, as the abyss of oblivion loomed before him, Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald made one final, desperate wish.

"Let me be free."

"Let me cast aside this cursed Origin."

"Let me be something—anything—other than this failure of a man."

He did not pray to the Root.

He did not plead to Heaven.

But the Grail—twisted, corrupted, but not yet fully consumed—

Heard him.

And in its final, fleeting moment of clarity—

It granted his wish.

---